If you find yourself in Winnipeg between now and April 8, 2012, be sure to take in the glowing exhibit, New Art from Cape Dorset at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Pieced together by Inuit Art Curator Darlene Coward Wight, the show turns the spotlight on two of Cape Dorset’s promising and prolific young artists, Ningeokuluk Teevee and Tim Pitsiulak.

Dorset’s Kinngait Studios have taught us to expect the unexpected in recent years as artists diverge from the traditional subjects that we know and love to express their very modern and often very personal Northern experiences. In keeping with this, the show includes only sculptures and drawings, indicative of a shift away from printmaking that Wight says is increasingly common with the younger generation of artists.

Among the most striking works here are Teevee’s myth inspired Sea Goddess and serenely defiant Tattoed Woman, both of which double as mesmerizing, abstract meditations on human hair rendered in coloured pencil. Pitseolak doesn’t fail to deliver with modern subjects executed in a refined realist style that whispers of Mary Pratt and Alex Colville. Filling every square inch of paper, his work often reads like massive snapshots documenting day-to-day life in Dorset. The show also includes a number of breathtaking sculpture works by Goota Ashoona, Joe Jaw Ashoona and Jamesie Pitseolak, negotiating with confidence the freedom that comes with stepping out of the shadows of the great Dorset artists that have come before. Don’t miss it!

For more information, visit www.wag.ca or head to the gallery at 300 Memorial Boulevard, Winnipeg, MB; (204) 786-6641.